Nanook Of The North - Film (Movie) Plot and Review

Canada, 1922

Director:
Robert Flaherty

Production:
Révillon Frères; black and white, 35mm, silent; running
time: 75 minutes; length: 1525 meters. Released 11 June 1922, New York.
Re-released July 1947 with narration and music. Re-released 1976 with
music track only. Filmed August 1920-August 1921 in the
area around the Hudson Strait, Canada; and along the shores of the
Hopewell Sound, Quebec, Canada. Cost: $55,000.

Producer:
Robert Flaherty;
screenplay and photography:
Robert Flaherty;
titles:
Robert Flaherty and Carl Stearns Clancy;
editors:
Robert and Frances Flaherty.

Arnold, Gordon B., "From Big Screen to Small Screen:
Nanook of
the North
Directed by Robert Flaherty," in
Library Journal
(New York), vol. 114, no. 9, 15 May 1989.

Carpenter, E., "Assassins and Cannibals: Or I Got Me a Small Mind
and I Means to Use It," in
SVA Newsletter
, vol. 5, no. 1, 1989.

Everson, William K., "Collectibles:
Nanook of the North
Directed by Robert Flaherty/
Man of Aran
Directed by Robert Flaherty/
Louisiana Story
Directed by Robert Flaherty," in
Video Review
(New York), vol. 12, no. 7, October 1991.

Dick, Jeff, "North to Alaska:
Nanook of the North
Directed by Robert Flaherty," in
Library Journal
(New York), vol. 119, no. 9, 15 May 1994.

Through the everyday life of one family,
Nanook of the North
typifies Eskimo life in the Arctic; it uses a number of sequences that
demonstrate Inuit ingenuity and adaptability in one of the world's
harshest climates. Flaherty filmed his documentary during the years
1920–1921 on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay's Ungava
Peninsula. He brought with him a Carl Akeley gyroscope camera which
required minimum lubrication in cold climates to facilitate pans and
tilts; Flaherty was something of a pioneer in the camera's use. He
also brought along printing equipment to process and develop the film on
location and a portable theater to involve the Eskimos more intimately in
the film's production, to enable them to understand its purpose.

Despite the license that Flaherty took in portraying some events and
conditions, the film's most important feature was its very basis in
reality. Nanook and his family were real persons who reenacted their lives
before Flaherty's camera. Not to be confused with cinema
verité, Flaherty carefully selected his "cast" and
directed them to "play" their own roles and to carry out
tasks that would demonstrate to the outside world how they conducted their
lives. Through a careful selection of details, Flaherty succeeded in
conveying the drama, the struggle, underlying their daily existence.

Nanook
was a significant departure both from the fiction and nonfiction films
that preceded it. It departs from fiction because it lacks a plot or
story. The background comes to the fore. Man's struggle to survive
in this bleak environment becomes an inseparable part of the film's
dramatic development. Its photographic detail was also far superior to
other films of actuality. The film departs from nonfiction, newsreels and
other actualities, in its narrative editing (for 1922), its ability to
tell a story through images, and its use of the shot
as the basis of a sequence. The film provides detailed pictorial
information of the environment, narrative structure, and the
filmmaker's art with its implicit emotive statement.

Nanook
is a reflection of Flaherty's life-long interest in the
interaction of diverse cultures. To be sure, Flaherty wanted to give the
outside world a glimpse of Eskimo life as he had experienced it during his
years as an explorer, surveyor, and prospector in the lower Arctic region.
However, he also wanted to capture on film a way of life threatened by
encroaching civilization.
Nanook
, like other Flaherty films, is not depicted in a particular historical
setting or context; the timeless appearance was deliberate. He also wanted
to capture the Eskimos' essential nobility, to portray them as they
saw themselves.

The building of the igloo sequences serves to illustrate Flaherty's
technique. Detail upon detail demonstrates Nanook's amazing
ingenuity. He builds a shelter out of ice and snow. The sequence is not
overexplained. The audience is left to discover each new step and its
significance—such as the way in which the translucent block of ice
is used as a window. What perhaps has sparked the most discussion is
Flaherty's shooting of the interior shots inside the igloo.
Restricted to camera negative stock with relatively slow speed or slow
sensitivity to light, he had an igloo constructed to twice the average
size with half of it cut away to permit sunlight to brighten the scene.
The Nanook family goes to sleep during the day for the benefit of
Flaherty's camera. This sequence illustrates Flaherty's
dictum that sometimes it is necessary to exaggerate reality in order to
capture its real essence.

Professor Frances Taylor Patterson of Columbia University was one of the
first to recognize the documentary value of
Nanook
. It differed from travel exotica, she wrote, because it did not wander
but used one location and one hunter to present an entire culture. Later
in the decade some writers criticized
Nanook
for lack of authenticity. However, most modern writers have been
delighted with the film's emotive powers which have made audiences
identify with the fundamental struggle to survive with all its
sociological and philosophical implications.

Nanook
, opening to rave reviews, almost immediately was considered one of the
greatest films of all times; it quickly received worldwide distribution.
Robert Sherwood, for example, called it "literally in a class by
itself." No one called it a documentary, though, until as a result
of the release of
Moana
(1926) and the writings of John Grierson, parallels could be seen in
Flaherty's work. They became the foundation for the development of
documentary film as an art form and as a new filmic sensibility. It is
perhaps Edmund Carpenter, the cultural anthropologist, who best elucidated
Nanook of the North
and Flaherty's work in general by noting a relationship between
this film and Eskimo art. To the Eskimo, he wrote, the creation of art is
"an act of seeing and expressing life's values; it's
a ritual of discovery by which patterns of nature and of human nature are
revealed by man." The drama of daily existence in the North is not
imposed from the outside but discovered by exploration, a process that
takes into account the natural environment and a philosophy of life.

Nanook
remains the most enduring of all Flaherty's films for its
simplicity of purpose, structure, and design. It ennobles its subjects
rather than exploits them. It relies on a few well-developed sequences.
The images, sharp and uncluttered, are still memorable.